Growing up

[…] for first, children and all other animals share in voluntary action but not in Moral Choice;
Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle

If it weren’t for the distractions
we used to preoccupy our dishevelled pates,
we all would eventually come to the conclusion
that life is a pointless exercise not worth the hassle
and simply end it. After all, even a horse
in a gown and a mortarboard, pulling a load
of beliefs, conjectures, hypotheses and theories—
as fallible as they come—must one day join
the grownups in a leaden paradise,
inventing yet another version
of the hourglass.


More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com

The half-century mark

It puts me in a rather peculiar position when—rather than, considering my age, courting a preposterous dowager—I yearn for the creamy scent of a perfectly ripe banana, the inconsequential beauty of unwitting lasciviousness—even if one exhibits something as mundanely inappropriate as picking one’s nose, so it is impossible not to call one a perfect scandal—a sun-drenched firmament of tiny freckles, and more. I can’t wait to see how ridiculous I will be in ten years when I’m sixty.


More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com

I must have lost something

The treasured few amongst the plastic army—the tin soldiers—that would forever be remembered as the toxic delight of my early youth went missing somewhere along the way to adulthood, and besides, I had outgrown my childhood toys, so for my twentysomething birthday, I bought myself a gas mask in an army surplus store, and now even that has disappeared somewhere during my excessive itineration. So I wonder if I have lost nothing but insignificant memorabilia or perhaps a fragment of my soul.


More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com